A study based on Black Duck Software's Koders.com search engine data shows that the use of the Ruby language has grown significantly in the last four years. According to the Koders.com data, Ruby usage is ahead of dynamic language alternatives such as PHP, Python and Perl, and just behind more entrenched languages such as Visual Basic, C/C++ and C#.
A recent study from Black Duck Software shows that usage of the Ruby programming language is on the rise.
Black Duck Software,
which provides software to manage the use of open source code, on Oct.
14 released data from its Koders.com search engine that show a dramatic
increase in popularity of the Ruby programming language. Black Duck
officials said tens of thousands of software developers use Black
Duck's Koders.com daily to find open source code and other downloadable
code.
Indeed, Black Duck said Ruby is now the fourth most requested
language on Koders.com, after Java, C/C+ and C#. And the number of Ruby
searches has increased by more than 20 times since 2004 and has
surpassed alternatives, such as PHP, Python and Perl, according to
Koders.com data.
"Black Duck's search data confirms the tremendous growth that we are
seeing within the community of Ruby developers," said Tom Copeland,
system administrator of RubyForge.org. "It's great to see a leading
code search site like Koders.com index RubyForge because it represents
another way to make the projects in our community available to tens of
thousands of developers worldwide."
Moreover, Ruby, used in combination with the Ruby on Rails
framework, is rapidly gaining momentum and will reach four million
developers worldwide by 2013, according to Mark Driver, research vice
president at Gartner. "Ruby will enjoy a higher concentration among
corporate IT developers than typical, dynamic 'scripting' languages,
such as PHP," Driver said.
Black Duck acquired Koders.com in April, and since then has enhanced
the code search service. Black Duck added more than 200 million lines
of code to the Koders.com search repository, increasing its size by
more than 33 percent, company officials said. The expanded code base
now includes more code from SourceForge, CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl
Archive Network) and the industry's leading site for Ruby projects,
RubyForge.org.
Code search with Koders.com represents an essential part of the
hybrid model of software development, which enables development teams
to reuse open source in combination with their own code and other
externally sourced components, Black Duck officials said. In addition
to code, Koders.com features other resources, such as a developer forum
and a monthly statistics page, which lists the top monthly search
terms, top projects and a solutions map for 11 popular programming languages, the company said.
"Black Duck remains committed to providing Koders.com as a free
service for developers involved in hybrid development," said Bill
McQuaide, executive vice president of products and services at Black
Duck Software, in a statement. "An interesting byproduct of the
popularity of Koders.com is the insight we can gain from Koders.com
users and the searches they conduct. In addition, this data shows part
of a larger story--how developers can use Black Duck's offerings to be
more effective in using open source within the framework of sound code
management practices."
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
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